Relationship advice from our IPPY award-winning authors of Great Sex Made Simple:
“I resolve to do my utmost to make requests in a manner that conveys unwavering confidence in my partner’s ability to fulfill them. We suggest treating your relationship as an opportunity to seek and bring out the best in each other. This approach is far healthier and far more rewarding than the bickering-based model presented on countless sitcoms. By emphasizing your belief in your partner, you will be treating your relationship as something spiritual, and you will be strengthening your bond. On a more practical level, communicating confidence is the most effective way to achieve the desired result.”
Mark A. Michaels and Patricia Johnson are a devoted married couple. They have been creative collaborators—teaching and writing about sexuality and Tantra together—since 1999. Michaels and Johnson are the authors of Partners in Passion (Cleis 2014), Great Sex Made Simple, Tantra for Erotic Empowerment, and The Essence of Tantric Sexuality. Their books have garnered numerous awards: Independent Publishing (IPPY), ForeWord Reviews, and USA Book News Best Books, among others. They are also the creators of the meditation CD set Ananda Nidra: Blissful Sleep.
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Feature
New Year's Resolutions
From Our 2013 IPPY Award Winners
Another year, another fresh set of resolutions from our 2013 IPPY award-winning authors and publishers. This year’s resolutions range from going digital to writing on the walls of public restrooms, and everything in between. Read on to find out what steps indies like you are taking to make 2014 a great year. Congratulations to all our winners for the inspiring initiative they are taking in 2014!
"My resolution is to remind myself of what makes publishing fun…a new author's excitement at signing their first contract, the thrill of receiving a satisfied reader’s email, and most of all, the honor of sending out a press release that we have won another IPPY award!”
—Len Barot, President of Bold Strokes Books
The Marrying Kind, by Ken O’Neill – Silver Medal Winner, Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Trans Fiction
Buccaneer Island, by J.P. Beausejour – Silver Medal Winner, Erotica
“After the publication and mild success of my book Bad Way Out, I find myself fretting over every single word in my follow up effort. It’s been a bit of a roadblock to the creative process. I know the origins of this consternation. It comes from reading reviews of my work. With the exception of the one reader who found Bad Way Out too boring to finish and another reviewer who found my sex scenes silly, the feedback has been encouraging to say the least. So encouraging, I am mired in fear that I will do nothing but disappoint those same readers in my second novel. One reviewer even predicted that there was no way that I could write something as satisfying as Bad Way Out. I am both challenged to rise to the occasion, and certain I will drop the ball. Therefore, my resolution for 2014 is to ignore the reviews, good, bad, and indifferent, and sally forth as if I am writing my first book. I have no history of failure or success. I simply have a story to tell.”
—C. Hoyt Caldwell
Author of Bad Way Out (Indie Uprising Media) – Bronze Medal Winner, South Fiction
“Every writer makes (well, I think they make) a New Year’s resolution to write more, which every writer needs (well, I think they need) to do more of, at least I know I need to do more. I say that every year, and it does not seem to help. A person told me one time: ‘You know how I did so well? I didn’t think about it.’ I believe there are great things you can do, if maybe you don’t think about it so much. This year I am going to make a resolution to pay more attention to my feelings…and get book 2 out in March. Really. Happy New Year!”
—Edward Cozza
Author of Nowhere Yet (Pinot Dog) – Gold Medal Winner, West Pacific Fiction
Beverly Hills Book Awards, Gold Medal Winner, Fiction Best Cover - 1st Runner-Up, Best Fiction - President's Award-Best Fiction
“My resolution for 2014 is to finish writing and illustrating the fourth volume of the Bumbling Traveller Adventure Series, in which the main character—Bumbling Bob— will lose himself in the chilly Himalayas on his continuing quest. My longer-term resolution as a publisher is to have at least six educational award-winning illustrated travel books, and to package them together into a cool boxed set before my very auspicious birthday in 2016.”
—Tom Schmidt
Author of Bumbling Through Hong Kong (Kakibubu Media) – Bronze Medal Winner, Graphic Novel/Drawn Book
“2013 ends, for me, with a profound loss, but also with an explicit charge for the new year, and for the rest of my life. Because it’s such a good one, I’d like to pass it along to you.
I was delighted to receive an LGBT fiction medal for I’m Trying to Reach You. My wonderful friend, the queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz, appeared in that book as a character (he ate my narrator’s cookie, but I managed to keep him from drinking from a glass of milk that I suspected had been poisoned by Jimmy Stewart). José passed away unexpectedly in December, and it’s an enormous loss for many of us. I’ve been encouraging people to take this (or any other) passage from his last book and write it with a sharpie in a public restroom: ‘Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of this moment, but we must never settle for that minimal transport; we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds.’ (José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia)
“If you’re not inclined toward vandalism, you can alternatively go to a party, get drunk, stand on a table, clink your glass, and recite it very loud before falling down. Or you can whisper it into a lover’s ear after sex, or before. I’m sure you’ll think of other possibilities. I’ll be doing all of these, this year and beyond.”
—Barbara Browning
Author of I’m Trying to Reach You (Two Dollar Radio) – Gold Medal Winner, Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Trans Fiction
“Our resolution is to bring our IPPY award winning eBook, Every Walrus Can Fly, to life in 2014 with an iPad application that will contain several activities and games featuring our lead character, Royce, and features from the original story.”
—Jacob Leffler & Brian Phillips, The Basement
Every Walrus Can Fly – Silver Medal Winner, Children’s Illustrated eBook
“I resolve to write. Every day. And each day, for as long as the right side of my brain will allow before there's nothing left. I begin writing in the morning—starting at 6 a.m. So I also resolve to not roll over and hit that tempting snooze button and to instead get out of bed and hit the power button on the coffee maker and the computer. That's how my novel, The Holden Age of Hollywood, was born. And in 2014, I aim to bring another bouncing baby book into the world. And when that happens, I hope to be acknowledged with another IPPY for Popular Fiction. That is the goal. Oh, and I also ‘resolve to call her up a thousand times a day and ask her if she'll marry me in some old fashion way’—but that's another story.”
—Phil Brody
Author of The Holden Age of Hollywood (Medallion Press) – Bronze Medal Winner, Popular Fiction
“After years spent writing a memoir, I’m turning my focus outward. I’m on a scavenger hunt for compelling stories to inspire my next book. This requires a curious mind, a heart open to what lies beneath a story’s surface, and courage to venture into the unknown. As a writer and a human, this is a good way to live.”
—Chana Wilson
Author of Riding Fury Home, A Memoir (Seal Press) – Gold Medal Winner, Gay/Lesbian Non-Fiction
“It's wonderfully fitting that you should inquire about our resolutions for the New Year. Our IPPY-Award winning book and our entire platform are about resolving to embrace the subject of one's life in honest, open reflection. Youlo Pages encourages people to create their personalized legacies by sharing, planning, conveying, organizing and giving. I'll add that, as our book is used in healthcare settings, community centers, chaplaincies, financial planning and law offices, funeral homes, faith centers and, most importantly, around kitchen tables, those shiny gold IPPY stickers are a signal that something important awaits inside. Our own legacy, which we hope to pursue with full heart and energy in the New Year, will be realized as our book falls into more hands and brings uplift, connection and joy.”
—Carol Lasky
Author of Youlo Pages – Gold Medal Winner, Aging/Death & Dying
“Being a publisher is great for New Year's resolutions! Every year brings new titles and new challenges and 2014 for me is a year of increasing tactile quality—beautiful new finishes and materials to give the digital revolution a run for its money.”
—Marc Hoberman, owner of Hoberman Publishing
London! by Marc Hoberman – Silver Medal Winner, Coffee Table Books
Stella’s Sephardic Table, by Stella Cohen – Silver Medal Winner, Cookbooks
“I resolve to write down ideas as soon as possible, before they slip away.”
—Peter Zuckerman
Co-Author of Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2’s Deadliest Day (WW Norton & Company) – Gold Medal Winner, Adult Multicultural Non-Fiction
“I resolve to stop fantasizing about John Keats. It's starting to bother my husband.”
—Amanda Padoan
Co-Author of Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2’s Deadliest Day (WW Norton & Company) - Gold Medal Winner, Adult Multicultural Non-Fiction
“Just like my resolution for 2013, I plan to spend time in 2014 marketing Emma's American Chinese New Year. As a holiday book, its appeal is cyclical, so I have to take advantage of the coming Chinese New Year, which begins at the end of January. When that effort slows down a bit, I plan to begin working on my next children's book. I've toyed with two ideas for the last several months, and I've finally landed on the one I want to pursue. So it's time to begin researching and writing—and seeing what kind of exciting journey that will take me on during the year.”
—Amy Meadows
Author of Emma’s American Chinese New Year (Outskirts Press) – Bronze Medal Winner, Holiday
“I hope to be better with time management and work towards carving out space for my writing. Too often, I let life overtake me, and days and months pass before I devote any thought or time to my work. This is untenable. Moreover, it makes me extremely unhappy. So, here's to 2014 where I will re-prioritize writing in my life and assure it gets its due.”
—Shelby Smoak
Author of Bleeder: A Memoir (Michigan StateUniversity Press) – Gold Medal Winner, Autobiograpy/Memoir III